Digital resources

Lloyd's Register of Ships online

Explore historical editions of the Lloyd's Register of Ships online now

Volumes of the Lloyd’s Register of Ships which are fully accessible and searchable online (between 1764-1998) can be accessed for free and in PDF format via:

Please note that not all editions have been digitised yet but the Heritage & Education Centre (HEC) are creating searchable scans of our entire Register Book collection up to 2000 and making them freely available online.  

A small percentage of the online volumes listed in the table below were scanned in by Googlebooks and by The Internet Archive independently of HEC.

All digitised Registers can be searched by any of the fields such as:

  • Ship name
  • Master
  • Ship owner
  • Place of build

In some cases, fields may be abbreviated such as ‘Capt’. for Captain or ‘Amer.’ for America). Vessels across the Registers can be found in alphabetical order of ship name.

The Registers for 1930-1945 were digitised as part of the Plimsoll ship data project by the Southampton City Libraries and Archives Services in conjunction with Lloyd’s Register’s Heritage & Education Centre. The fields in these books can be searched by:

  • Ship name(s)
  • Year of build
  • Gross tonnage 

This is the first time that pages from this original edition of the Register of Ships 1764 has been made available online. The only surviving volume is on permanent loan to the British Library. Please note that copyright of all images of the 1764-6 edition remains with Lloyd’s Register. Images © Lloyd’s Register Group Limited 2017.

If you want to understand the meaning of certain symbols, terms, and abbreviations found in the Registers, please check out our Interpreting the Register Books pages for more information.

If you wish to use our resources please ensure that you properly reference the Lloyd's Register Foundation Heritage & Education Centre in your work and consult our Licensing and Terms of use pages.